Board Draft League
Welcome to the Board Draft League Wiki Welcome to the Board Draft League (BDL) Wiki. This wiki is dedicated to the game created and developed by the Colorado Avalanche message board community. This collaborative effort is designed to help both new and old members of the BDL understand the rich and complex history of the league. In The Beginning It all began during the summer of 2009. The Colorado Avalanche had just completed their worst season ever. The message boards were in the middle of transitioning to the horrible kickapps software, and morale was at an all-time low. But from the lowest of times, a small glimmer of hope arose. Several dedicated members attempted to keep the community alive by developing the Board Draft. In the beginning, it was nothing but a draft. There was no game, only 5 female GMs that picked from available male members to get the best team. The best at what? That was still to be determined. The Board Transition Activity was initially still high on the Avs boards prior to the transition. More than 50 people were signed up for the draft and the prospects seemed bright, even though nobody had a clue what they were being drafted for. Then came the dreaded transition. The boards went offline for weeks. And when it came back, the community was in disarray. Nearly half of the members disappeared, many were never heard from again. The ones that stayed around were very dissatisfied with the new boards, and activity dropped to an all-time low. The Board Draft suffered. One of the GMs (anais) left and had to be replaced. The draft went slowly, and many of the drafted players never even knew they were drafted. The Trial Season As the draft progressed, the few active members remaining had to figure out what to do with the growing teams. It was decided that some kind of predictions game would be the most fair. However, there was no hockey during the summer, so the group reluctantly decided to predict who would be the highest scoring MLB team each week. There was a total of 5 teams, and with head-to-head matchups, one team had a bye each week, which ended up being wildly unpopular. There were also a number of restrictions on picks that met with opposition. The BDL was formed, although “turbulent” does not adequately describe the mood around the league. Fortunately for the BDL, enough people stubbornly battled through board issues, unfavorable rules and a large amount of inactivity. In this trial season, the Pucktards were triumphant, winning every game. The Fighting Pineapples finished 2nd, but were disbanded after the season due to their GM quitting the game. The other teams, whose names were based only on the GM’s user name, fought through the season but came up short. Despite widespread chaos, the league had learned many important lessons for the future. And once the league began following the NHL exclusively, the popularity would rise and solutions would be found that would make each season more enjoyable than the last. Season 1 One thing was brutally clear after the Trial Season: it was time to reset the league and try again. Once again, volunteers were asked to sign up. This time, there were only 25. Four of them (AvsJen, JaymondFlurrie, Avaholic03 and hejdukrocks) were the GMs of the Internationals, Prime#s, Mongooses and Pucktards respectively. Each team made six picks per week. The picks were no longer restricted like they were in the trial season; anyone could pick any team each week. But the problem of inactive players continued. The message board software had driven many people away. Despite a few close calls, the Mongooses prevailed to win the inaugural BDL Championship Draft. The Pucktards finished a close second, followed by the Prime#s. Although they were the highest scoring team in the league, the Inties finished in the basement. IceCold14 established his dominance in the league by winning the scoring title, something he would repeat in Season 2. A little bit of attrition naturally occurred as a few players disappeared and were dropped from their teams. A few tweaks here and there were made to address some complaints. The most major change was having each team assign a captain and assistant captain to settle any ties. Also, the 6-week long Season 1 was judged to be too short, so the league moved to a 9-week season. This all set the stage for an even more exciting Season 2 of the BDL. Season 2 The league was starting to find a nice groove entering Season 2. Despite a few players leaving the game, overall popularity was rising as new players injected excitement and veterans began figuring out the intricacies. Slowly but surely, the rules were getting figured out to make the game more interesting. Teams began introducing logos and jerseys that promoted team pride. Rivalries were developing, primarily between the champion Mongooses and the only team they couldn’t beat, the Pucktards. Most of the season went off without a hitch. The Pucktards, Prime#s and Internationals were all in contention for the championship, while the Mongooses struggled badly in the wake of their successful first season. The Pucktards eventually prevailed, just two points ahead of the Prime#s and four points ahead of the Inties. Throughout the season, one of the biggest complaints was “blocking”, which happened when teams reacted to the opposing team's picks and chose the same teams, thus canceling out several player’s pick. In an effort to combat the issue of blocking, the concept of “invisible” picks was created for the upcoming Season 3. In order to work, Avaholic03 prepared to step down as GM of the Mongooses, and promoted A33 as replacement. Avaholic03 took on the sole role of commissioner, and the BDL Boards were created. On the BDL boards, each team had their own section to discuss and make picks without the other teams seeing and blocking those picks. The transition went fairly smoothly for the Mongooses. However, the same could not be said for the change happening to the Prime#s. The Drama Unfolds Wanting to bring about a change, JaymondFlurrie made plans to step down as GM of the Prime#s and promote a former GM from the Trial Season, sam333, to take control. However, in the confusion of the transition, sam333 may have overstepped her bounds when she announced plans to re-brand the team as the Beeters for Season 3. It was a classic case of miscommunication, as JaymondFlurrie reacted to the name change quite strongly. He claimed that sam333 did not have permission to change the team name, and then attempted to trade her to another team before the GM transition took place in order to preserve the Prime#s identity. It was a desperate move that did not work, as no other GMs wanted to get invovled with the growing drama. After weeks of arguments, the two eventually came to a compromise. The GM transition and name change were inevitable. However, the name was slightly altered to be "Beet#rs" in order to preserve some of the identity that JaymondFlurrie was trying to protect. Also, the league promised JF that if an expansion ever happened, he would get priority to make a new team. In the meantime, JF signed a contract with the new Beet#rs and was given partial control as assistant GM. Season 3 Season 3 marked the final BDL season to follow the 2009-10 NHL season. Like Season 2, it would last nine weeks, but with the added Olympic Game that was designed to keep the league going during the 2-week Olympic Break. The most significant change was the implementation of the BDL boards and the invisible pick option. Other minor changes affected the rules on player contracts. The league implemented a minimum veteran salary to prevent unreasonably cheap contracts for veteran players. Also, as smurfinablender signed a massive 10-season deal, the league decided to set 10 seasons as the maximum contract length to avoid the possibility of escalation. The season was another successful one for the league. The Internationals dominated from start to finish to capture their first Championship Draft. The Beeters once again finished in second, and remained the only BDL franchise without a championship. The Mongooses used the strength of a dominating performance in the Olympic Game to beat out the Pucktards for third place. In the final week of the season, AvsJen managed to hold onto her lead in the scoring race, ruining IceCold14's attempt for a 3rd straight title. By the 3rd season, most of the rules had been settled. The only point of contention came as the Washington Captials emerged as the safest pick in nearly every week. With so many people picking the Captials, some members suggested placing some sort of limit on how many players could select a certain team. However, such a limitation failed to gain support in the Trial Season, and since the NHL season was ending, the league decided on a wait-and-see approach. The topic would be addressed again only if an exceptionally high scoring team emerged in one of the future NHL seasons. The Long Offseason Season 3 ended as the NHL playoffs began. The BDL did not run during the NHL playoffs, so the activity level in the league dropped considerably. Then came the long, slow NHL offseason. The activity on the Avalanche message boards dropped and the BDL became the site of many random conversations with not much new happening in the league. Mongooses GM A33 was successful in recruiting a few new players who signed in anticipation of Season 4. Unfortunately for A33, some of those players would never play a game for the Mongooses. As the summer (and NHL offeseason) wore on, the NHL in their infinite wisdom finally saw the light, and made the switch back to the more user-friendly Invision Power Board (IPB) software. The effects were noticed almost immediately. Activity picked up on the boards. A33 continued to recruit new people to the BDL, as well as a few people randomly signing up. The league grew steadily until it was clear that expansion was necessary to allow more people to play each week. League Expansion Within just a few weeks, the BDL moved from casual discussion about expansion to a full-blown expansion draft. Two new teams were added to the league. The Kripplers were started by former Mongooses and Internationals player klozge. The Fighting Pineapples were revived by long-time Pucktards player smurfinablender, who was also a player for the original Fighting Pineapples during the Trial Season. The draft lasted four rounds, plus additional compensatory picks to make up for klozge and smurfinablender leaving the Mongooses and Pucktards respectively. The draft took only one day to complete, followed by a whirlwind free agent frenzy in which each team added the un-drafted free agents. The league now featured six full teams, for a total of nearly 40 members. In order to accomodate the new teams, the schedule for Season 4 had to be adjusted and teams split into two divisions. To fully use the 26-week long NHL regular season, the BDL went to a 13-week long schedule. For 12 weeks, teams would face each of their division teams three times, and each non-division team twice. Then for the 13th week, the first place teams from each division would face each other for the league championship, while the second and third place teams from each division would also play in the playoffs for pride only. This schedule format would be immediately repeated for Season 5 as well. Season 4 would have each team submitting five picks per week, while Season 5 was undecided depending on how many people joined the game. Season 4 Season 4 is scheduled to begin October 7, 2010. The first partial week will be considered "preseason" and is only for the purpose of allowing the new players to get used to the game. Week 1 will be Oct. 11 - 17. The season will end after the playoff week, January 9, 2011. Season 5 will start immediately after the end of Season 4, with the first week being Jan. 10 - 16. Current Teams *GM: General Manager *aGM: assistant General Manager *C: Captain *A: Assistant Captain Category:Browse